Predestination is Not An Excuse

The Article

by rifqiallil

Everything in this world is subject to Allah’s will and power, this is undoubtedly true. In fact, this concept is one of the six-pillars of Islam faith (Imaan). Which Muslims have to believe in the divine decree and predestination which in Arabic being called as “qada’ and qadar”.

However, this is not an excuse for human particularly Muslims to evade from being held responsible for his or her actions in life. If we intended to do something, we are directly able to make our own decisions. By carrying out our own intentional actions, we should recognize that we are doing the actions according to our own desire and discretion. So we should not blame fate as the reason why we do things. It is based on this concept of intentional actions that Allah will judge us. Say if we are doing works voluntarily, it is surely within our own concern to do it. So we are fully responsible for all of our actions. Unless, when we have to do something that is beyond our own control and compliances, then only Allah will not judge us for the actions being made. For instance, a car driver accidentally harms a pedestrian. This happened because there are some technical or mechanical failures during his driving. This problem is beyond his control as he cannot do much to prevent this from happening and it is not on his concern that the accident could happen. So we cannot entirely blame the driver for this accident as it is beyond his ability and knowledge to do so. So this is what we call as fate.

Other than that, the idea to blame fate for any intentional wrongdoings committed by a person is totally absurd. As it is stated in the Qur’an “But you do not exercise your will, except that Allah wills it” (al-Insan : 30).And bear in mind that Allah ahs the foreknowledge of all our actions, however this divine knowledge of Allah does not entirely prevent human from doing what they desire, and this is what we call as free will. This shows that our free will is being connected to His permitting us to carry out our own actions and Allah also permitted us to make our own choices. Meaning, we could not avoid facing the consequences of our own actions by putting fate as excuse.

Another perspective asserts that Allah deems which future to be allowed and humankind’s choices are between those possible futures approved by Allah only. This shows that our actions in this world are bounded and not being affected by what has been written in the Lauh Mahfuz (God’s Preserved Tablet), but rather, the actions we made has been written in the Preserved Tablet because God has the foreknowledge of human’s past, present and future actions without the restriction of time and space. 

So, as human, we are given the opportunity to choose what we want to do according to Allah’s will. But still, we are responsible of what we had chosen to do. Allah provides us with a variety of options, some are good and some are bad in order to test us. It is our decision to choose which one and thus we are liable of it, not predestination.